


what the living do

by qwerty24



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, The X-Files Revival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 19:16:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5940109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwerty24/pseuds/qwerty24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes he has trouble recognizing this new Scully that has emerged from the darkness, this Scully that lives in clean, bright spaces, away from shadows, away from him. Other times, he finds that nothing has changed, the small of her back, the "Mulder, it’s me" still tinny through the phone, the way she will look at him and it will feel like starting over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what the living do

“Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.” _2001 – A Space Odyssey_ , Arthur C. Clarke

* * *

 

Sometimes he has trouble recognizing this new Scully that has emerged from the darkness, this Scully that lives in clean, bright spaces, away from shadows, away from him. Other times, he finds that nothing has changed, the small of her back, the _Mulder, it’s me_ still tinny through the phone, the way she will look at him and it will feel like starting over.

He had resented her at first when she left. He still thinks of that day, the single suitcase by the door, the tracks she made in the snow – _little feet,_ he remembers thinking – how he is not sure if she said _let me go_ or _ask me to stay_ as she stood in the doorway, so small against the vast whiteness of Virginia winter. He had not understood then that he was really the one who had left first, receded into the depths of the abyss to chase aliens and hunt monsters.

 _Dinner, at the house?_ Mulder asks Scully one afternoon in their basement office, her feet propped up on a box, still desk-less after all these years. If she has doubts they do not show because she turns to him, smile winning – he notices she does more of that now – and says, _I would love to._

The next evening, Scully paces in front of the mirror in her Georgetown apartment, agonizing over what to wear. The smell of burnt pie wafts in from the kitchen and she curses under her breath, reminded again of why she does not cook. She wants this, and she wants it to be good, but she wonders sometimes if the two of them have forgotten how to do this, how to be together without the fear and the ghosts that seem to haunt them around every turn.

She knows they have nothing to worry about when she pulls up to the house, _their_ house, lawn mowed, fence freshly painted and finds him at the doorstep, ready to accept her bottle of wine and blackened attempt at cherry pie with a laugh and careful hug. She notices that he has taken to touching her like this, like she is something fragile, with soft hands, gentle arms.

 _You’re beautiful,_ Mulder says, eyeing her in this new black dress he has never seen before, and she does not tell him that she first wore it on an ill-fated first date with a pharma rep she met at the hospital, a lanky blond man who talked about yachting and summering in the Rockaways.

She is reminded, almost fondly, of seedy motel rooms and chemical hair dye when he brings out paper cups for the wine. _Sorry,_ he shrugs sheepishly, _it was either that or the coffee mugs._ But it is perfect, and after a half bottle of wine, and a second helping of Mulder’s risotto, she can almost pretend like this is how they have always been, easy, safe with one another.

At midnight they are still there, across from one another at the dining table, Scully laughing as Mulder tries to impersonate Skinner: _Agent Mulder, Agent Scully, a moment in my office please?_ And he thinks he has never heard a more beautiful sound than her laugh, than his name on her lips as she tries to catch her breath.

She is still buzzed from her second beer, and it is raining hard when she moves to leave, so he tells her to stay, offers to take the couch, but she protests, _no,_ she says, and then what she does not say –  _I don’t live here anymore._

So he leaves her with a blanket and a pillow on the couch and goes to do the dishes, two sets of forks, two sets of spoons, and he thinks he could get used to this. Later, he is startled to find her upstairs in the bathroom, hair still wet, dressed in only his FBI Academy shirt, brushing her teeth. _Yes,_ he thinks, he could get used to this. Too easily.

She stands on her toes to reach up and draw him in as she whispers warmly into his ear, _Thanks Mulder, I had a great night,_ before her lips graze his. And that night, before the screaming starts, he swears he can still taste the mint and burnt cherry of her mouth. At first, in the pale light of early morning, he thinks she is on the phone, _the hospital maybe,_ he thinks, but he hears what sounds like a sob and then a cry, and he is bounding down the stairs, two at a time, until he finds her on the couch, feverish, tossing and turning as another ragged sound forces its way out of her throat.

He remembers years ago, a motel off of I-90 in the middle of desert country Northern California, the broken A/C and the way her body had tensed against his as he tried to wake her, how she had not looked him in the eye for days afterward. But that Scully was different, thin and drawn, hair jet black against sickly skin, and he wonders if there are some demons that cannot be extricated, even in the light of day, some ghosts that tether themselves to limbs and refuse to leave.

Just as he goes to rest his hand against her shoulder to rouse her, he swears that the strangled cry that escapes her is _Will, William,_ and it nearly undoes him, but she starts awake, eyes as piercing as the sea, hands still curled into half fists at her side. _Mulder,_ she whispers, and he is reminded again of her warm breath and mint toothpaste, and he wants, almost unbearably, to lean down and consume her, _tell me what hurts you,_ he wants to tell her, _let me take it away._

* * *

 

Over slightly stale bagels and hot coffee, Scully tells him about an experimental procedure she is spearheading to treat Pentalogy of Cantrell, _babies born with their hearts outside of their bodies,_ she explains almost reverently, and then stabs a piece of grapefruit with her fork. He wants to ask her why, after a lifetime of cutting into and learning the secrets of the dead, she has become a champion of the living, grafting ears to gift hearing, sewing hearts back into empty cavities. But he does not ask, and he is not sure if it is because he already knows the answer, or if he is afraid of what she will say.

She burns the roof of her mouth with the coffee that morning, and it stings when she gargles mouthwash. He is watching her from the bedroom where he is pretending to fold laundry from the hamper, and notices her wince. It is oddly intimate, seeing her like this, and he feels compelled, suddenly, to reach out, to touch the soft flesh of her exposed thigh, taste that spot behind her ear. Instead, he says, half pleadingly, _I was wondering, since it’s Sunday, and you’re here, if you wanted to stay and –_ His words hang in midair, and Scully turns to face her usually articulate partner, wondering if what he really means to say is _I was wondering if you wanted to stay. Forever._

She has only the dress she wore last night, so she finds a pair of Mulder’s track pants to slip on under his t-shirt and joins him on the porch, her small frame swallowed underneath drooping fabric. It had rained heavily overnight, and the air smells like soil. Earthworms have gathered on their porch, some wriggling and wet, others already still and lifeless, weak to the sun’s unforgiving rays. Scully lowers herself into a deck chair beside Mulder, suddenly boneless and tired, the memory of her nightmare, and of her son lingering in her mind.

She can sense his questions, and she wishes she had the right answers to soothe him with, but there is only so much she can say, and so little she can do without hurting him. He speaks first, steady and reassuring, even in his grief: _I think of him too, all the time._ And she places her small hand into his warm palm, and he grips it so tightly she can feel the crescents of his fingernails pressing into her wrist.

She feels terribly mortal, corporal in moments like this, brittle, as if a single wrong move might cause her to break, and she hates it, the vulnerability, the ache like an old wound in her stomach. She thinks of her own body, itself an X-File, and wonders if perhaps this elusive truth they have been searching for so long is right here, in her very flesh, her very bones.

She had a bone marrow biopsy a week ago to be thorough, but she does not tell him this, all he knows is _alien DNA –_ she sometimes fears that she will become just another mysterious monster to him, another bastardized experiment of government conspiracy. This fear though is an intellectual one, unbidden, and mostly unwarranted. There are other, more insidious fears that live inside her, as sharp as the memories she has learned them from. She thinks of what men are capable of, what the Duane Barrys and Donny Pfasters of this world do to the living, what the men who abducted her did to her and to countless other women. And this perhaps is her greatest fear, the one that she cannot articulate to Mulder, that the true monsters are not the ones who come deformed and dangerous in the night, but rather the ones who live in the bright light of day in human form, the same ones who put this sickness inside of her, the ones who stole her daughter, who took both of their sisters.

Her son, _their_ son, would be fifteen now, a veritable young man, and she wonders if he looks up at the stars too, wonders if he knows that he was so wanted, so loved.

Scully thinks too of her daughter, of the disease that had ravaged her and taken her so painfully. She thinks of God when she thinks of her children, and she remembers standing by the sea, the hulking mass of her father’s ship, fading, fading, until it was only a dark splotch that fell into the horizon. She turns to face Mulder, hand still locked in a death-grip around hers, and whispers back, _I miss him. So much._

He remembers a cold night in a jail cell years ago, body broken from the baton of the guard who terrorized him daily, the iron taste of blood in his mouth. He had contemplated an exposed ceiling pipe and the belt of his jumpsuit with a frightening seriousness until his son’s face had suddenly come to him, eyes as intensely blue as his mother’s. There had been a time before that, damp soil pressed like a vice above him, earthworms and the roots of plants threading through his fingers, when he had been intimate with death. He does not tell Scully that his nightmares are about this, about his son high above the Earth, and him below it, dirt from her hands still raining down on him.

He thinks of all of the people they have lost on his quest for truth, of Sam, chasing him by the beach one summer, waves roiling, and wonders if a young Scully, bright-eyed and hopeful, had been looking out at the sea too, already searching for their white whale.

So Mulder thinks of all of the people they have lost, but he knows that true ghosts are made of the living. _I love you, Scully,_ he wants to say, _I don’t ever want you to haunt me._ Instead, he takes her other hand in his and draws her towards him, presses his mouth urgently against hers. She is no longer something fragile, or perhaps he wants to break her to put her back together again.

He is coffee and morning stubble, hot against the skin of her face, mouth demanding, hands roaming. _Scully, please,_ he moans against the crook of her neck, drawing skin between his teeth that she knows will leave a mark. She is both enthralled and embarrassed by this display, like he is discovering her for the first time. Suddenly, she finds herself lifted, then pressed against the screen door, both wrists still captive in his, the skin of her jaw and neck still under assault.

 _Off,_ he groans roughly as he releases her wrists and tugs at the hem of her shirt. He opens the screen and guides her inside until she is against the opposite wall, divesting both of their shirts in the process. She had forgotten how good it could be like this, the cold ceramic at her back, his rough hands pinning her wrists. He knows she wants this too, the way her eyes dilate and her hips roll to meet his as her and then his pants and underwear come off.

He is always startled by how small she is, hungry and writhing between him and the wall. She is warm against him, but there is a darkness that passes beneath her eyes that frightens him, makes him pause momentarily, even as she breaks their gaze and reaches down to take him in her hand. She is urgent and unyielding, and he has to stop her before this ends unceremoniously. Scully takes the lobe of his ear between her teeth and bites down harder than he expects, then laves her tongue over the superficial wound and whispers, voice husky, _make it go away._

And then, it is only the two of them, out of practice against the tile wall of their kitchen, his hands gripping her hips, bruises already blooming around her wrists and under the skin of her neck, her nails raking down his back, sure to leave raised pink lines for days.

She arches against him, breath uneven, and his name from her lips is like a benediction, her heel digging into his backside as she trembles around him, eyes open, always, looking at him. He follows after her, and buries his face into her throat, hand slamming against the wall to brace himself, hard enough that if it were drywall, he might have gone right through it. _God, Scully,_ he murmurs afterward, and she laughs softly, remembering a time after they’d first moved to this house when she’d said something similar and he had responded with _nope, it’s just me._

* * *

 

On Monday, Scully arrives at work in a collared shirt buttoned all the way to the top, hair fanned around her face in loose curls. Mulder offers her coffee from the Windmere coffee maker they have been using since ’93. She declines, _I burned myself_ , she tells him.

 _Oh,_ he replies, returning the carafe to the plate, fidgeting with a pencil between his fingers. She wishes she could amend what she has just said, but instead she takes her unfinished paperwork and goes to sit in her folding chair. They are always getting their words tangled, saying the right things in the wrong way. What she wanted to tell him was: _I burned myself drinking coffee with you yesterday morning, and it hurt, and I felt alive._

The memories pulse inside of her, and she realizes that of course she will always be afraid of the ways her body is fallible, to cancer and being violated and shot and stabbed and tested on. But she looks across the office at this man who knows this too, perhaps even better than she does, and despite it, still believes. The cross is cool against the hollow of her throat, hidden beneath the collar of her shirt. She has returned to her paperwork when she hears Mulder crack a sunflower seed between his teeth, tossing the split shell onto the floor. _Yes,_ she thinks, remembering the two of them so many years ago, imbued with something close to hope, _I’ll settle for a life in this one. With you._

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Marie Howe's poem "What the Living Do."


End file.
